Snake travels down the Garden State
Parkway to Atlantic City to meet some accomplices for a
new heist.

Story Summary

Snake heads down the Garden State Parkway
towards
Atlantic City, but is intercepted by a biker gang trying to exact a
toll from him. He kills them without too much trouble.

Arriving in Atlantic City, he heads to the Snake Pit bar and meets up with an old
accomplice, Marrs, for a prearranged plot to steal the 1961
Lincoln Continental that President John F. Kennedy was
assassinated in in 1963, on display at the Dead President's
Casino. But Marrs double-crosses Snake and puts him, bound, into
a crab cage which he drops deep into the ocean.

CONTINUED IN SNAKE PLISSKEN CHRONICLES #2

Notes from the Snake Plissken
Chronology

Page 1 of this issue opens with the caption
"Early the next day..." implying that it is the day after
Snake's escape from New York with the President in Escape from New York.
However, the later comic book series called
Escape from New York published by BOOM Studios, began
with a story that picks up immediately after the events of the
film, as Snake is walking away from the President as the
Commander-in-Chief plays the wrong audio tape for the Hartford
Summit and a hunt for Snake begins. That then leads into a
series of storylines that follow immediately one after the other
for 12 issues over a course of weeks in the timeline. So, the
story presented here could not really be placed the day after Escape from New York
in the chronology. I have decided to place it shortly after the
events of
Escape from New York #12 ("Dead
Man's Switch") which ends a 12-issue run of consecutive
stories and issue 13 picks up about 14 years later (in 2011),
allowing us to fit it in our current storyline (as well as "Up and
Running" from The Adventures of Snake Plissken
one-shot). So, the "Early the next day..." caption allows us to
say that it's the next day after the end of
"Dead Man's Switch" (which
works out nicely as both previous stories, Escape from New York
and "Dead Man's Switch", end
with Snake leaving New York, placing him in the correct locale
for the adventure that begins in this issue).

Didja Know?

Snake Plissken Chronicles was a 4-issue comic book mini-series published by CrossGen in
2003. I borrowed the title of the series to use as the overall
title of the Snake Plissken stories studied here on PopApostle.

The issues of this series do not have published individual
titles assigned to them. I assigned the title
"Garden State" to this issue because Snake runs into trouble
throughout almost immediately after entering New Jersey, the
Garden State (New Jersey's official nickname).

Characters appearing in this
issue

Snake Plissken

Jersey Boy (nickname given to biker punk by Snake)

Marrs

Phobos

Deimos

Didja Notice?

Cover C of this issue, by Travis Smith, a sort of collage of
images, shows Snake's face in the middle, framed by the same
oval design that normally frames the face of George
Washington on the U.S. one dollar bill. Below Snake's
portrait are the words: ...wrap him up in
taffy-like dreams, was the Duke’s voice echoing from another
world somewhere. "I heard you were dead." The words are
from the novelization of Escape from New York
by Mike McQuay.

The issue opens on the Garden State Parkway, near a highway
sign stating "Sayreville 3.5 miles, Atlantic City 92 miles".
The Garden State Parkway is Route 444,
a toll way running the length of the state of New Jersey,
north-south;
Sayreville and
Atlantic City are both along its route.

Page 1 reveals that the national government has long ago
stopped looking after its interstate highways and local
citizens must maintain the infrastructure.

The punk Snake encounters on the parkway on page 3 has a
partial logo visible on his t-shirt; it appears to be the
logo of rock band Bon Jovi. The band originated in
Sayreville.

In this issue, Snake drives what appears to be a military
Humvee. Most likely it's stolen; he did not have such a
vehicle in any previous adventure.

One of the bikers who goes after Snake on pages 4-6 is
wearing a motorcycle helmet with twin rows of
red-white-and-blue dots and stripes on it. It appears to be
designed similarly to one of the helmets once worn by
Evel Knievel (1938-2007), an American stunt performer who
wore red, white, and blue costumes and performed spectacular
stunts using motorcycles, cars, and even a steam powered
rocket; the character of Suicide Gorchnik seen previously in
"Escape to New York"
appeared to have been loosely based on Knievel.

The large pistol Snake uses against the bikers is not one
we've seen him use before; it seems likely it must also be
stolen.

On page 6, "Sayreville" is misspelled as "Sayerville" on the
exit sign.

As Snake approaches the toll booths on the parkway on page
7, the booth signs have "E-ZPass" crossed out on them so the
signs say "Only Cash". E-ZPass
is a toll agency that runs electronic toll collection
services on toll roads in many U.S. states, including New
Jersey.

As one of the bikers looks at the approaching Snake from the
toll booth, he says, "Snake P...P...Plissken. I heard he was
dead."

The Garden State Parkway emblem seen on the toll booth on
page 8, panel 5, is the official GSP emblem.

The explosion of the toll booth on page 11 seems much larger
than a simple grenade should create.

As Snake drives into Atlantic City, the logo seen on the
sign on page 12, panel 3, is the logo of the
Atlantic City Expressway, a 45-mile toll road from
Turnersville to Atlantic City.

Snake meets with Marrs at a bar called the Snake Pit in
Atlantic City. This appears to be a fictitious
establishment.

According to the "Test Your Power of Pop Observation"
article in
Snake Plissken Chronicles #4, the man in the
far right of panel 3 on page 13 is Tone Rodriguez, the
book's artist.

Electronic signs for Rogue Ale, Moo-Head Beer, Rodriguez,
and Dysart Brew
are seen inside the Snake Pit. The Rogue Ale sign appears to
be based on the logo of the real world
Rogue Ales.
Moo-Head Beer is likely a play on the real world
Moosehead
Lager. "Rodriguez" is an entirely fictitious beverage as
far as I can tell, possibly named for the book's artist,
Tone Rodriguez. According to the "Test Your Power of Pop
Observation" article in
Snake Plissken Chronicles #4, Dysart Brew was
named for Joshua Dysart, a fellow writer at Hurricane
Entertainment, owner of CrossGen.

When Snake and Marrs are reunited at the Snake Pit, Marrs
jokes, "Son of a bitch. If it isn't Cobra McGillicutty. No,
Viper O'Reilly? I know, Snake Plissken, that's it!" He also
adds, "Where the hell you been? I thought you were,
well...dead."

When Marrs tells Snake he thought he was dead, Snake
responds, "No, just detained." The word "detained"
here has a double-meaning in that it can mean both "delayed"
and "in custody", both of which apply to Snake in his recent
adventures.

Marrs' two criminal cohorts are twin brothers called Phobos
and Deimos. Phobos and Deimos are also
the names of the two moons of the planet Mars. The names
Phobos and Deimos come from Greek mythology and were the
twin brother gods of horror and terror.

Snake and Marrs have developed a plan to steal the 1961
Lincoln
Continental that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated
in in 1963, on display at the Dead President's Casino. The
actual car Kennedy was riding in when he was shot was that
vehicle year, make, and model. The
Dead President's Casino is fictitious. The vehicle has been
on display at the
Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan since 1978. The
details about the vehicle itself given by Marrs on page 16
are accurate.

On page 17, Marrs tells Snake to stay out of trouble and
Snake responds, "Just like in Cleveland?" Probably this was
intended by the writer to be a reference to the Cleveland
events later whispered about in Escape from L.A.,
but that story was later told in the BOOM Studios comic book
series and took place much later, in 2011 (beginning in "Get
the Hell Off My Lawn"). The fact that Snake chooses to go
"home" to the Cleveland area in "Get the Hell Off My Lawn"
suggests he may have been raised there, so he may have had
many adventures there in the past, including one (or more)
with Marrs.